I have mentioned Dick’s love of sport. Wallace had the same love to a marked extent; indeed, it was the one temptation which proved irresistible, and seduced him once and again from his adherence to his master. It was not that the dog openly resisted or defied orders, but that he showed craft in snatching an opportunity to evade them, in slipping off unperceived, and conducting his hunts in an independent style in the preserves and on the great moor at hand—coming home with a dogged fidelity, and yet with the self-convicted air of a culprit, after his lust for the pursuit of prey was satisfied, to the punishment which he was perfectly aware remained in store for him. Of course, for a dog like Wallace to roam abroad unattended, on such an errand, was to expose both him and his master to certain penalties, and every effort was made, for the dog’s own sake as well as for his master’s credit, to break him of so dangerous a propensity. The attempt was not altogether successful. The ruling passion was so strong in Wallace that it rivalled even his conception of duty. But the consequences of his escapades always fell short of the condign punishment at the hands of incensed proprietors which his master dreaded for the dog, and repentance, forgiveness, amendment followed till the next outbreak. These outbreaks would probably have decreased in number and died out as Wallace’s spirit of enterprise abated with his advancing age;[B] but I am sorry to say Dick proved an artful decoy and subtle tempter. The two dogs did not venture on a forbidden expedition under the very eye of their master; but the moment his back was turned to go from home, I have been assured that the certainty and celerity with which the conspirators detected his absence was something marvellous. Wallace and Dick set off like the wind—or at least as like the wind as the old dog’s lagging limbs would allow—to the nefarious indulgence of their appetite. Nothing short of chaining up Wallace before his master left could prevent the catastrophe. No efforts of his young mistress—of whom, at the same time, he was exceedingly fond, and whose escort and protector he was generally proud to be—were of the least avail to detain him; she has told me how she would run out to intercept the dogs on the first hint of their decamping, and try to hold them back by main force, but Wallace would wrest himself from her grasp, and trot after Dick, already scampering away in the distance.